12 Days of Giving Day 9: From Feeding Tubes to Family Meals: A Pediatric Therapist's Journey of Transforming Children's Lives

What happens when your child struggles to eat, speak, or engage with the world around them? Meet Rachel Hemer, owner of Rise Pediatric Therapy, who transforms lives through innovative pediatric therapy approaches. In this powerful Day 9 of our 12 Days of Giving series, Rachel shares heart-touching success stories - from helping a child move beyond feeding tubes to empowering a young performer to shine in their Christmas program.

For parents feeling overwhelmed or defeated by their child's developmental challenges, this episode offers a beacon of hope. Rachel breaks down how occupational, speech, and feeding therapy work together to create positive changes in children's lives. She emphasizes that seeking help isn't a sign of failure - it's a step toward empowering your child's future.

Discover why early intervention matters, what to expect during evaluations, and how Rise Pediatric Therapy creates a welcoming 'home away from home' environment for both children and parents. Whether you're concerned about your child's development or simply want to understand the signs to watch for, this episode provides valuable insights and reminds you that you're never alone on this journey.

Ready to take the first step? Visit www.risepediatricspeechtherapy.com to learn more about their comprehensive pediatric therapy services in Urbandale, Iowa.

Episode Highlights:

• Real success stories from Rise Pediatric Therapy
• Understanding developmental milestones and when to seek help
• Breaking down different types of pediatric therapy
• Creating a supportive environment for both children and parents
• The importance of early intervention
• How to start your child's therapy journey

Part of the '12 Days of Giving' series, highlighting professionals making a difference in our community.

As always we ask you to comment, DM, whatever it takes to have a conversation to help you take the next step in your journey, reach out on any platform!

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Journey of Pediatric Therapy
• 4:29 Building Trust with Families
• 9:29 Understanding Occupational Therapy
• 11:50 Navigating Evaluations and Assessments
• 16:48 Recognizing When to Seek Help

Transcript

Stoy Hall, CFP® (00:00.884)
On this final day of 12 days of giving, I'm with one of my newest clients who's phenomenal with Rachel here with rise pediatrics. So the big part of what we've been talking about this entire series is getting you to recognize that you're not alone in your life journey or those you know are not alone in their life journey in a lot of us have children not saying everyone needs to have them, but children seem to be the key to most of our hearts. But yet

There's issues that pop up all the time with them, whether we know what's going on or whether they're diagnosed of what's going on as parents, that is the hardest thing that we have to go through. And today, not only is she a guest and a therapist, she's also really good friends with our previous guest, Jessica Markin, which you can go ahead and look at, too. And they work hand in hand together to help our children through their speech therapy or autism, whatever. But

I'm going to stop rambling and give it over to Rachel. Why don't you give us a quick update about what you do, who you are, and why you've got into the speech therapy business.

Rachel Hemer (01:06.752)
Yeah, so thanks, Joy. I'm Rachel Heamer and the owner of RISE Pediatric Therapy located in Urbandale, Iowa.

We see kiddos anywhere from birth to about 12-13 years and we support them on their developmental journey. So we offer occupational therapy, speech therapy, and feeding therapy. And we are just a support to their family and making sure that their child is reaching those milestones and gaining skills. And we work together with the family to make sure that's all happening.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (01:41.386)
love it. I love that. And we're talking off camera about a couple stories. Can you tell go through those stories like tell us about those stories and why they're so meaningful to you.

Rachel Hemer (01:50.56)
Yeah, so I picked a couple of my favorite ones, but honestly, every day is different. Every day just fills your heart working with kids and being able to be the person that helps them move forward with their development is just a really special role to have.

But I picked out two stories to share today, because they're very different, but both will stay with me forever. So the first story is a child came to us and they were having trouble or in the past had had some medical trauma with feeding. And so we had to work on their oral motor skills to be able to eat foods through their mouth.

When they came to us, they were eating primarily and drinking through a feeding tube. And so just working with this family on the skills needed to chew and swallow safely and through therapy at the end, he was able to not even rely on that tube anymore and to just see.

that family be able to share mealtime without stress without having to track everything that went on in and just be able to trust that their child's body and their child knows the skills needed to nourish themselves and that is just really special.

the other story I want to share is a bit of an older kiddo had had some persistent articulation errors. So speech sound errors and, by her age, she shouldn't, shouldn't have had any of them. and she had been getting help on and off throughout the years. but she came to me and was really excited to, perform in her Christmas program. And this was a couple of years back.

Rachel Hemer (03:51.266)
And so she brought in her lines for the Christmas program and we specifically practiced those lines. And of course they had

the lines just happened to have all the errors that she had. So we worked through those and she was able to perform at her Christmas program confidently. And you know, there might have been one or two errors left. But I heard that there wasn't many. And she was just so proud of herself and her family was so proud that she could get up there with confidence and minimal errors and people knew what she was saying.

So that was really special.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (04:31.9)
those stories, obviously took a lot of work. But I mean, let's be real, life takes a lot of work. Specifically, anything with therapy or anything that deals with money seems like it's just the hardest thing in the world to do. When these families first came to you, where were they? Do you think like mentally and emotionally? Where do they come when they come to you? Are they at wits end? Are they lost? Like, what's that like?

Rachel Hemer (04:54.314)
Yeah, so majority of the families we get, parents are scared. They've tried other things. Nothing has clicked. They're worried about their child's future. They just really come to us most of the time pretty defeated.

Luckily, we work with amazing families who once they meet us and we build that confidence with the kiddo and with the family and Team with them to move forward they those walls tend to come down and that Defeat turns into Moving forward and confidence and wanting to help and do things at home. So it's really

that the change in mindset is amazing to see and that's what we want and what our kiddos need. Our kiddos can feel when we're defeated, our kiddos can feel that stress and you know, they can't have that when they're trying to develop but

it takes it takes a village and being able to be part of that journey for parents and take some of that stress off and know that their child's development is in good hands and and they can just be a parent for a while they can just be the comfort they don't always have to be the therapist the advocate the everything so that's really

Stoy Hall, CFP® (06:25.756)
you say a lot of the therapy, obviously, you're doing it for the kids, like the therapies on the kids. But there's a lot of therapy that goes on for the parents to for sure.

Rachel Hemer (06:34.274)
Yeah, quite a bit. But those relationships that we build, you we always preach we want our clinic to be a home away from home for the kiddos.

also for the parents, you just get this relationship with these parents. And it just is so deep. they send you Christmas cards from years and years after you're done seeing their kid. And I walk around in Target and think, so-and-so would love that toy. And I haven't seen them for years. So yeah, think it's really important that the parent can feel connected to their therapist

whether it be a speech therapist or occupational therapist, and that allows for that holistic care.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (07:25.46)
everyone sitting at home listening whether they know their kid has an issue or not, right? We know feeding to feeding and speech by name, obviously say what the hell they are. But talk a little more about the occupational side. And what does that mean? Because that might just be a term that clinically we use and we know. But like maybe someone at home that has a question about their child doesn't understand what that means.

Rachel Hemer (07:47.542)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I am a speech therapist. So if any occupational therapists are watching this, and they're like, my gosh, just have grace for me. And so we're always still learning. But we added occupational therapy to our practice just about a year ago, because we found that so many of our kiddos that had got speech therapy really needed that occupational therapy side. So when we think occupation, or occupational therapy, a lot of times we think adults and, and they're

jobs, but what is your job as a child? To play?

to participate in routines, and then as we grow up, then it's to be in a classroom and have success in that classroom. So it really varies on what we work on in occupational therapy, but it can be anything from teaching this kiddo how to play with toys or how to engage in their environment to working on fine motor skills like handwriting or buttoning things,

daily living skills like transitioning from one place to the other, potty training, they work on feeding as well using utensils. They also work on some gross motor things like balance and coordination. They really, they just, they do it all. There's an overlap between speech therapy and occupational therapy of where...

Rachel Hemer (09:18.284)
There's a common ground of things that we work on together, which allows for just such great collaboration and like I said, just holistic care.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (09:29.77)
What can parents do right now as they're sitting at home and they're thinking through like, I think I might need to take my child somewhere. I'm overwhelmed. I'm defeated. What would you say their first step should be?

Rachel Hemer (09:41.696)
Yeah, yeah, so think it's really common to kind of be nervous for these appointments. You know, when you go to the doctor's office or something, it's just a sterile environment and

Just stressful and it can be for kids especially and then obviously as parents taking care of our overwhelmed child like then that's stressful. But we really try to create a space at Rise where we take you as you come.

We don't care if you had to bring the rest of the family. We don't care if you're sleep deprived and maybe the answers to the questions we're asking you aren't coming out right and it's okay. We'll get to know your kiddos. So the first step is just taking a deep breath and knowing that at rise, like you'll be taken care of. You don't have to perform that first day. Your kiddo doesn't have to perform. They're probably not going

to it's a new place. We make it fun, we have toys, everything we do is through play. We're very passionate about child-led therapy and so what that means is just basing everything off of trust and before that kiddo trusts us like they can't learn. So we spend a significant amount of time really

the first couple days, weeks, connecting with that child and just building that trust before we move on to any goals or anything like that. So kind of went off on a tangent a little bit there, but how to get started is you can go to our website. So it's risepediatricspeechtherapy.com. And then we have...

Rachel Hemer (11:34.434)
form to fill out a contact form that just gives like your name, your concerns, your child's name, and then and then we'll contact you. So feel free to give our office a call. But we know sometimes you think about these things that

9 o'clock at night when it was just really tough to get your kiddo regulated and ready for bed. Like that's might be when you think about it or you might think about it when they're having a meltdown in the car because they didn't want to leave. So just feel free to shoot us a message on our website and we'll reach out to you within 24 or 48 hours.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (12:14.356)
What does an evaluation look like? Because I know a former athlete, how many injuries I've been through going into the doctor's office and it's like 1000 different questions under different tests. And I feel like I've been there for eight hours. What does an evaluation look like? So I obviously I filled the form I speak to you we come in what does an evaluation look like?

Rachel Hemer (12:28.119)
Yeah.

Rachel Hemer (12:34.698)
Yeah, so we the evaluation we typically reserve an hour for them across the board and we get kiddos

We get such an array of children. like we could get an infant bottle feeding or we could get an 11 year old working on social skills. So very different, but we reserve an hour for all of our evaluations. And let's say your concerns are in regards to speech. Then you would meet with the speech therapist for about an hour. If your kid's not tolerating that hour, then that's fine. We don't want to push them.

And we don't want to push them to a point where they don't want to come again. So in that evaluation, we will ask a couple questions. But most of that's done online. We just want to hear your journey of how you got here and what made you come in today. What does everyday life look like for your child? And then where are the breakdowns in their speech or their behavior or?

anything in their everyday life that's challenging. So we'll talk about that a little bit. And then the rest of the evaluation, depending on age, is all done through play. So it shouldn't be stressful for your kiddo at any point. And then as they get older, do more testing that's a little more intricate. But at that age, your kiddo is typically used to being in a classroom setting anyways.

So yeah, it just really depends on where they're at with their abilities as well. But just always remembering that we are going to

Rachel Hemer (14:19.978)
take whatever we can get and the evaluation is really just to get started. And then after that, we'll recommend therapy and that's really where the magic happens where we get to know your child not under testing type circumstance and we just get to bond and have fun and laugh and smile and then be working on our goals at the same time and your child will probably never even notice.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (14:46.742)
That's awesome. Because I hate evaluations. Never liked them. Keeping it simple and safe, I guess, if you will, is the best. We now we're family. We're we're figuring things out.

Rachel Hemer (14:50.198)
Yeah, yeah.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (15:01.832)
at what point besides when I feel defeated as a parent, should I really be tuning in to what's going on? Like what, I guess not necessarily milestones, but what are some generic things that I should be looking out for that are somewhat abnormal and may need extra help?

Rachel Hemer (15:19.97)
Yeah, so I think parents get really caught up in milestones and they're a good tool and every kid really is going to do things at a little bit of different times. But the thing I like to tell parents is like, you know, why not? It's not gonna hurt to come in and get your questions answered. So as soon as you feel like, hmm.

That's, I've never seen that before and this was a little challenging. I'm gonna go get it checked out. So some specific examples would be if you're not understanding what your child's saying. Now our first couple words, yeah, they might say bah for ball or something like that and that's fine. You don't give them time to develop the whole word ball. But.

If you're not understanding your child like two, three, four, five, definitely a good idea to bring them in. And if they seem to have like can't make full sentences by like three, four, that might be a reason to bring them in.

If they their play skills look a little different, it's all okay, but that could be a sign that might lead to a speech delay or

sensory processing difficulty or anything like that and I'm just keeping in mind that early intervention is key. So if you come in because it's your first child and you don't know if this is typical, we'll do the evaluation and we'll be like, this is awesome. This is difficult. No big deal. these are the things to watch for and come back in if you see this. but if you bring them in if you waited five years and hoping that

Rachel Hemer (17:17.802)
whatever the challenge was would go away. You might have missed an important time. We can still work on things, absolutely. They will still make progress at five years old. They will make progress their whole life. But just knowing that your intuition is usually right and it's not gonna hurt to get an evaluation and have a professional's opinion.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (17:45.29)
Awesome.

as we get to the end of our episode, and for all those listening, we're, as you know, my guests, specifically my clients always get their full episode of 45 minutes to an hour, which will be coming out in 2025. So we'll be able to dive more deeper into rises process, the philosophy and culture and everything. But as we get to end of this, we always end this way of what is one item concept idea, whatever resource if you will, that you could give our listeners

that will help them take that next step forward, wherever they're at in their journey, wherever it's going on with their children or whatever. What is one thing that they can take out of this conversation to make that next step?

Rachel Hemer (18:28.054)
Yeah. so I think the one thing would be to just know that you're not alone and there are people in your community that are here for you. and there's just more and more all the time, but if you don't take that step to get in touch with them, you might be struggling with whatever you're struggling with for, for longer than you.

So just knowing that we're here and we're eager to help and we'd love to be a part of your child's development and help your child out in their everyday life and make them more comfortable, make you more comfortable. Yeah, the resources are here. It's just kind of taking that first step and knowing that it's gonna be okay and getting some opinions and some help is not a bad thing.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (19:25.894)
not a paid actor. I swear, I swear she's not but I always preach you're not alone in this world. lot of people going through your situation and a lot of us professionals have seen it and we're here to help you and so I end the podcast basically the same way except for this time I'm going to say happy holidays to everybody. That being reach out to us. Like share comment and all that crap not for the algorithm. Okay.

because we're here for you. want to help you and the only way we can help you is if you communicate with us. We don't know what you're going through unless you talk to us. So I know I'm out here for myself. I know Rachel's out there with her staff. Just reach out if you want to get to Rachel through me. Fine. Doesn't matter. Let's have a conversation. Don't don't be afraid to DM us, email us, call us.

We truly want to help you wherever you're at in your life. And we have a lot of resources outside of just us that can help you. So, Rich, I appreciate you coming on. You have a happy holidays. And I look forward to next year's conversation where we go deeper into rise pediatric therapy.

Rachel Hemer (20:25.836)
Thank you, yes.

Rachel Hemer (20:32.288)
Yeah, great. Well, thanks, Joy.

Stoy Hall, CFP® (20:35.798)
Boom!